pedrop357:BarkingUnicorn: Sigh. Mr. Out-of-State Seller, the service my State provides for you is customers. If I spend money to raise fish, you are damned well going to pay me for the privilege of catching them, even if it's only a fin that you slice off the fish that you catch.

My state does not provide ME to someone else. The state's money comes from me.The state does not magically come into money that it then lavishes on me so that it can present me to others.

Even though you are in one of the poorest States, you would not live a year without its services.

Nullav:This doesn't concern me one. Anyone who has ever shopped around for a laptop charger should know where I'm coming from. Taxes won't come close to closing the gap between online and brick/mortar retailers, for all but the heaviest items.

The same applies for enterprise level networking and computer gear. Frys doesn't stock Cisco, Juniper, etc. (rebranded Linksys doesn't count). If you want a Cisco ASA 5505, 2504 WLC, or a Juniper SRX100-210 for a home lab or advanced home things, you have to go online.

Same with small servers. Fry's doesn't sell something that (IMO) can compete with a Dell Poweredge T110 in terms or build, support, warranty.

Without the tax: The consumer goes online and finds that a merchant has the perfect item for one dollar. The consumer buys that item. The merchant gets the whole dollar.

With the tax: The same consumer still has just the one dollar to spend. The merchant still has the same item online, still priced at a dollar. The tax on that item will push the price to, say, $1.05. The consumer doesn't have $1.05 to spend. He has a dollar.

OPTION 1: The consumer doesn't buy the item. The merchant does not get this consumer's dollar in that case.

OPTION 2: The merchant can bring his price down to $0.95 so that, with tax, it comes out to a dollar (or just charge a dollar and back out the tax from that). The consumer pays his dollar to the merchant.

With or without the tax, the consumer has spent only the one dollar he had.

The merchant got the dollar from the consumer, but now he is required to hand over 5 cents of it to the government.The merchant got $0.95.

Before you get all "Bullsh*it! The consumer would just suck it up and spend $1.05!" just stop and think about this in the aggregate: Consumers are only going to have so much to spend online. If the government decides to add a tax to online purchases, the consumers aren't magically going to have additional money to pay the taxes. They're simply going to spend less to offset those taxes. The amount of money the consumers pay out won't change, but the actual sales coming from that amount will be less because of the tax. The consumer still spent what he could, but part of it got pulled out because of the new tax. That financially impacts the merchant -- not the consumer.

It's exactly the same concept as people cutting back on other spending in order to keep putting gas in the car when the price of gas goes up. When that occurs, it's the other merchants who are taking the hit. Not the consumers.

BarkingUnicorn:pedrop357: BarkingUnicorn: Sigh. Mr. Out-of-State Seller, the service my State provides for you is customers. If I spend money to raise fish, you are damned well going to pay me for the privilege of catching them, even if it's only a fin that you slice off the fish that you catch.

My state does not provide ME to someone else. The state's money comes from me.The state does not magically come into money that it then lavishes on me so that it can present me to others.

Even though you are in one of the poorest States, you would not live a year without its services.

You didn't address my point. I pay for those services now via property (paid by my landlord, passed on to me), fuel, payroll (collected by my employer, passed on to me). My state does not provide anything to Newegg to ship me stuff that Newegg isn't already paying for and passing on to me.

My state does not own me in any sense and no entity is obligated to pay my state because they interacted with me as you suggested with your statement "the service my State provides for you is customers."

pedrop357:BarkingUnicorn: pedrop357: BarkingUnicorn: Sigh. Mr. Out-of-State Seller, the service my State provides for you is customers. If I spend money to raise fish, you are damned well going to pay me for the privilege of catching them, even if it's only a fin that you slice off the fish that you catch.

My state does not provide ME to someone else. The state's money comes from me.The state does not magically come into money that it then lavishes on me so that it can present me to others.

Even though you are in one of the poorest States, you would not live a year without its services.

You didn't address my point. I pay for those services now via property (paid by my landlord, passed on to me), fuel, payroll (collected by my employer, passed on to me). My state does not provide anything to Newegg to ship me stuff that Newegg isn't already paying for and passing on to me.

My state does not own me in any sense and no entity is obligated to pay my state because they interacted with me as you suggested with your statement "the service my State provides for you is customers."

You don't seem to like being a State resource, but you are. Maybe farmed fish think they're free as wild ones, too.

dumbobruni:pedrop357: Hopefully amazon.com starts putting more of those lockers and similar delivery receptacles in states like Montana, Oregon, New Hampshire, etc.

I'll plan my big purchases and have them waiting for me. I'll visit Oregon once to twice a year to pick up expensive things. Even if it doesn't quite work out money wise, the spite/fark you factor to my state will make it worth it to me.

in order to avoid paying more sales tax to your state, you will just pay more gas tax to your state.

pedrop357:BarkingUnicorn: pedrop357: BarkingUnicorn: Sigh. Mr. Out-of-State Seller, the service my State provides for you is customers. If I spend money to raise fish, you are damned well going to pay me for the privilege of catching them, even if it's only a fin that you slice off the fish that you catch.

My state does not provide ME to someone else. The state's money comes from me.The state does not magically come into money that it then lavishes on me so that it can present me to others.

Even though you are in one of the poorest States, you would not live a year without its services.

You didn't address my point. I pay for those services now via property (paid by my landlord, passed on to me), fuel, payroll (collected by my employer, passed on to me). My state does not provide anything to Newegg to ship me stuff that Newegg isn't already paying for and passing on to me.

My state does not own me in any sense and no entity is obligated to pay my state because they interacted with me as you suggested with your statement "the service my State provides for you is customers."

Thoguh:I don't have a problem with this. It'll cut down on really blatant tax evasion, that's it. And smaller companies won't have to "deal with 9,000 tax codes" or anything like that. Some vendor will see a business opportunity to run all that stuff for a small surcharge and all the small businesses will just contract through them.

The firm I work for sees 600-900 million dollars in business helping companies comply with this. We don't even work for companies with under $250MM in revenue. Small companies are screwed.

feckingmorons:Thoguh: I don't have a problem with this. It'll cut down on really blatant tax evasion, that's it. And smaller companies won't have to "deal with 9,000 tax codes" or anything like that. Some vendor will see a business opportunity to run all that stuff for a small surcharge and all the small businesses will just contract through them.

The firm I work for sees 600-900 million dollars in business helping companies comply with this. We don't even work for companies with under $250MM in revenue. Small companies are screwed.

ArgusRun:Bullcrap. Software and apps exist now to do the calculations and filing for you.

You have no idea what you are talking about. The granularity of this goes to street address, even zip codes can cross taxing jurisdictions. There are more than 167K local taxing jurisdictions in the US, there are 21879 in New York York State alone.

This is not some excel plug in, this is a high maintenance, high cost service. Yes there will be plenty of vendors who will help you incorporate this into you existing systems, but for large businesses that sell books and other stuff the cost for consultancy and deployment will absolutely exceed $22MM in the first year.

BarkingUnicorn:feckingmorons: Thoguh: I don't have a problem with this. It'll cut down on really blatant tax evasion, that's it. And smaller companies won't have to "deal with 9,000 tax codes" or anything like that. Some vendor will see a business opportunity to run all that stuff for a small surcharge and all the small businesses will just contract through them.

The firm I work for sees 600-900 million dollars in business helping companies comply with this. We don't even work for companies with under $250MM in revenue. Small companies are screwed.

Anybody that walks up to a cop with a camera in hand to pitch a fit about something stupid is asking for trouble and clearly trying to be a YouTube hero. I bet that cop has written exactly ZERO tickets for people parking bikes on the side walk so they don't take up limited street parking.

feckingmorons:BarkingUnicorn: feckingmorons: Thoguh: I don't have a problem with this. It'll cut down on really blatant tax evasion, that's it. And smaller companies won't have to "deal with 9,000 tax codes" or anything like that. Some vendor will see a business opportunity to run all that stuff for a small surcharge and all the small businesses will just contract through them.

The firm I work for sees 600-900 million dollars in business helping companies comply with this. We don't even work for companies with under $250MM in revenue. Small companies are screwed.

Sounds like your company's screwed.

Well we had revenues of more than $31B last year so I think we're OK.

Ah, I see. That explains why you're not concerned enough to read the farking bill, which explains why you've been spouting so much ignorant bullshiat about it.

WireFire2:Anybody that walks up to a cop with a camera in hand to pitch a fit about something stupid is asking for trouble and clearly trying to be a YouTube hero. I bet that cop has written exactly ZERO tickets for people parking bikes on the side walk so they don't take up limited street parking.

optikeye:Seriously? Do you save every receipt from a online purchase; a book or a dongle or something rather incidental.And claim that toal up and pay taxes on those when you fill out fed and state taxes?

Yes I save the receipts and file quarterly use tax returns are required. In Florida you can file and pay on line.

I work for the largest accountancy firm in the world, and I have to swear annually that I have complied with all my tax obligations to keep my job. Even if I didn't have to do that it is the ethical thing to do.

I last filed in 4.12.2013 and paid $257.88. That is about average for my quarterly filings.

The record keeping and filing take less than an hour every three months.

BarkingUnicorn:feckingmorons: BarkingUnicorn: feckingmorons: Thoguh: I don't have a problem with this. It'll cut down on really blatant tax evasion, that's it. And smaller companies won't have to "deal with 9,000 tax codes" or anything like that. Some vendor will see a business opportunity to run all that stuff for a small surcharge and all the small businesses will just contract through them.

The firm I work for sees 600-900 million dollars in business helping companies comply with this. We don't even work for companies with under $250MM in revenue. Small companies are screwed.

Sounds like your company's screwed.

Well we had revenues of more than $31B last year so I think we're OK.

Ah, I see. That explains why you're not concerned enough to read the farking bill, which explains why you've been spouting so much ignorant bullshiat about it.

Exactly what part of the proposed legislation differs from what I have said? You want to call me out, call me out on specifics.

Bisu:feckingmorons: You already have to pay tax on the items you buy from out of state vendors that do not collect sales tax if those items would be taxable in your state. Use tax, not sales tax is what it is called. I file my return and pay the tax quarterly as required by my state of residence, Florida.

If you live in Deleware, Montana or Oregon you have no state sales or use tax. All others should be paying their use tax as the law requires unless the vendor collects it.

This will not raise your tax burden one cent. It will however create an accounting nightmare for the sellers and many smaller sellers will simply close. Those that remain open will have higher tax compliance costs and will pass those costs along to the consumer.

If you people had paid your taxes all along like you're supposed to you wouldn't be facing this problem. Quill v. North Dakota was not litigated to save you from paying the tax you rightfully owe, it was litigated so Quill and retailers similarly situated wouldn't be required to comply with tax laws in jurisdictions in which they have no nexus.

TLDR version - you already owe these taxes, you don't pay them. Now they want businesses to collect them because you won't pay voluntarily and prices will go up. Pay your taxes deadbeats.

Incorrect.

Use tax collection varies by state. In some states, they only require you pay the full percentage on very large purchases (e.g. over $1000). If you don't make any large purchases, you can either itemize your use tax or pay a fixed amount based on your income. So say I earn minimum wage and make $15,000 in 2013 and spend $999,000 in out-of-state, online purchases. If this was in the form of one thousand transactions at $999 each, I could either pay (assuming 6% sales tax) $59,940 in use tax by itemizing, or $12 if I go based on income. BOTH ARE LEGAL. It's just like you have the option of the standard deduction or itemizing your deductions. You can CHOOSE to pay more if you want, but ...

So your argument is that you can calculate it different ways based on jurisdiction so you don't owe the tax?

Is that what you're saying? That is wrong. While tax compliance methodology may varyby jurisdiction, the compliance requirement still exists.

We're discussing reality not some alternative world in which you can scheme to defraud the state by structuring your transactions to be serially below some threshold, that is generally a felony in and of itself.

Seeing how Dems have farked up your health care and social security (read: you are never going to see it) you might want to start to re-evaluate your voting habits. That is, unless, you enjoy peeing on your own shoes, as many of you seemingly do ...

feckingmorons:BarkingUnicorn: feckingmorons: BarkingUnicorn: feckingmorons: Thoguh: I don't have a problem with this. It'll cut down on really blatant tax evasion, that's it. And smaller companies won't have to "deal with 9,000 tax codes" or anything like that. Some vendor will see a business opportunity to run all that stuff for a small surcharge and all the small businesses will just contract through them.

The firm I work for sees 600-900 million dollars in business helping companies comply with this. We don't even work for companies with under $250MM in revenue. Small companies are screwed.

Sounds like your company's screwed.

Well we had revenues of more than $31B last year so I think we're OK.

Ah, I see. That explains why you're not concerned enough to read the farking bill, which explains why you've been spouting so much ignorant bullshiat about it.

Exactly what part of the proposed legislation differs from what I have said? You want to call me out, call me out on specifics.

Page 1 and your Boobies: " It will however create an accounting nightmare for the sellers and many smaller sellers will simply close."

You've been hyping the complexities and expenses of sales tax software and services but completely ignoring the fact that the States will have to provide them to sellers for free.

pippi longstocking:It just farking amazes me that things like minor gun control, equal pay for women, and healthcare do not pass, but a tax on everything passes without a problem...man you guys really need to start getting pissed about the way they run this place.

Here's a hint: the side that blocks those things doesn't have the letter D next to their names.

Speaking as a bleeding heart liberal from Washington State (The state with the most regressive tax code in the nation. Ha! Eat it Mississippi!), I say fark this. An initiative here tried to get a state income tax going instead of the insane 9.8% sales tax and it was rejected because the ads basically said, "If rich people have to pay taxes, they'll come for you next!" and all the idiots fell for it because, you know, "taxes," "job creators," "tree of liberty," and all that. Sales taxes hurt the poor and middle class. I have to say, on this one, I'm totally rooting for... HOUSE REPUBLICANS?!? *etthhiicckkkkaaaaadhhfffhdggghhhhhhh* Sorry, almost swallowed my tongue there for a second.

AdolfOliverPanties:This is another example of why we are farked.Politicians do not do what constituents want.They do what big money wants, or they do something that will allow them to take in more of our cash so they can spend it on shiat constituents don't want.

"Big money", really? What, pray tell, is big money? Just rich people in general. This is going directly to the states whose citizens should already being paying sales tax on items purchased online but are not because they can get away with it.

I sure don't like paying sales tax but I realize this is right and fair. If not for this those states that rely on sales tax would just have to raise some other taxes to make up for revenue shortfalls.

I like society and civilization and all the wonderful trappings that come along with it.

Like roads and bridges and, yes, parks.

Yeah, because we won't have roads, bridges, and parks if we don't spend $6.8 trillion per year on things like:

• $75,000 to promote awareness about the role Michigan plays in producing Christmas trees & poinsettias.• $15.3 million for one of the infamous Bridges to Nowhere in Alaska.• $113,227 for video game preservation center in New York.• $550,000 for a documentary about how rock music contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union.• $48,700 for 2nd annual Hawaii Chocolate Festival, to promote Hawaii's chocolate industry.• $350,000 to support an International Art Exhibition in Venice, Italy.• $10 million for a remake of "Sesame Street" for Pakistan.• $35 million allocated for political party conventions in 2012.• $765,828 to subsidize "pancakes for yuppies" in the nation's capital.• $764,825 to study how college students use mobile devices for social networking.http://www.coburn.senate.gov/public//index.cfm?a=Files.Serve&File_id =b 69a6ebd-7ebe-41b7-bb03-c25a5e194365

Rindred:So, if I buy something online. The vendor/store isn't in my state. The company that I have my credit card with doesn't reside in my state. The company that processes the credit card to pay the vendor doesn't reside in my state. Question: what entitles my state to even one penny of that transaction? If I cross a state border and buy a sandwich, I don't pay my home state sales tax on it. This isn't the same thing how?

homeschooled:Raise your hand if you answered $0 when your state tax return asked the dollar amount of out of state or online purchases that you owed taxes on.

*raises hand*

Now, how many of you were willing to pay those taxes, but just had no f*cking clue how to go about figuring out exactly what you need to pay, therefore you broke the law and evaded the taxes because you know you'll never get caught?

*raises hand*

This is why I'm OK with business collecting them. Because if you leave it up to me, sh*t isn't going to get done. I'm lazy and unorganized. But I am willing to pay it if it doesn't involve another step in filing my tax returns, and possibly getting audited.

MA has a safe harbor amount based off your...AGI(?) that you can add to cover all your out of state purchases under $1000. You have to report any single purchases over that amount separately.

will i now have to deal with sales tax laws and fill out 50 different forms a month concerning my sales all the states because i use Amazon as a store front or will marketplace sellers be considered business separate from amazon

This is beneficial to you, unless you have more than 50 employees to make those $30k in sales, which seems unlikely. You can ignore it, but Amazon will start charging sales tax, as well as the bigger marketplace sellers, so you become cheaper for anyone in a state with a sales tax (well technically you just still enable them to evade the tax due on their purchase if they want to, rather than being cheaper).

penguinfark:Rindred: So, if I buy something online. The vendor/store isn't in my state. The company that I have my credit card with doesn't reside in my state. The company that processes the credit card to pay the vendor doesn't reside in my state. Question: what entitles my state to even one penny of that transaction? If I cross a state border and buy a sandwich, I don't pay my home state sales tax on it. This isn't the same thing how?

This is also my question.

yep, taxing based on TCP/IP location i guess

how do states determine whether you bought something within their borders?

Without the tax: The consumer goes online and finds that a merchant has the perfect item for one dollar. The consumer buys that item. The merchant gets the whole dollar.

With the tax: The same consumer still has just the one dollar to spend. The merchant still has the same item online, still priced at a dollar. The tax on that item will push the price to, say, $1.05. The consumer doesn't have $1.05 to spend. He has a dollar.

OPTION 1: The consumer doesn't buy the item. The merchant does not get this consumer's dollar in that case.

OPTION 2: The merchant can bring his price down to $0.95 so that, with tax, it comes out to a dollar (or just charge a dollar and back out the tax from that). The consumer pays his dollar to the merchant.

With or without the tax, the consumer has spent only the one dollar he had.

The merchant got the dollar from the consumer, but now he is required to hand over 5 cents of it to the government.The merchant got $0.95.

Before you get all "Bullsh*it! The consumer would just suck it up and spend $1.05!" just stop and think about this in the aggregate: Consumers are only going to have so much to spend online. If the government decides to add a tax to online purchases, the consumers aren't magically going to have additional money to pay the taxes. They're simply going to spend less to offset those taxes. The amount of money the consumers pay out won't change, but the actual sales coming from that amount will be less because of the tax. The consumer still spent what he could, but part of it got pulled out because of the new tax. That fi ...

Let's add a little bit to the mix, since there is one thing you forget: the merchant has to "buy" the item to sell. Let's say this item costs $0.90, and now the merchant makes $0.10 profit. Slap a $0.05 cent tax, and that can eat into the little profit the merchant has. Nine times out of ten the merchant will pass the tax to the consumer.

feckingmorons:So your argument is that you can calculate it different ways based on jurisdiction so you don't owe the tax?

Is that what you're saying? That is wrong. While tax compliance methodology may varyby jurisdiction, the compliance requirement still exists.

We're discussing reality not some alternative world in which you can scheme to defraud the state by structuring your transactions to be serially below some threshold, that is generally a felony in and of itself.

No, retard. It's actually legal. I thought you were just dumb but obviously now you're a stupid troll. Itemizing your taxes is illegal? LOL? Ignored.

MrHappyRotter:This is good news for web developers in foreign countries who will be hired for a fraction of the cost of U.S. web developers to update various merchants' stores to be compliant with the new tax regulations if this becomes law!

If the locality wants their tax, then they should be responsible for entering and updating their tax information into a secure database that is publicly available to merchants. A tiny fraction of the taxes go towards maintaining that database.

I don't see why people have a problem with this, it's not like this is some new tax, before internet commerce came along a few years ago you most likely paid sales tax on all your purchases anyway. Besides it's not like it's some federal tax that will pay for god knows what, it all goes to your state and local city to pay for schools, roads, etc.